Imagine a scenario where members of development teams from some of your favourite big budget video games of the last decade, combined forces to create an indie studio and develop a new IP (intellectual property).

The Long Dark is a first-person, post-disaster survival simulation, set in the aftermath of a geomagnetic super storm that ravaged North America’s technology infrastructure.

The Long Dark’s main character William Mackenzie is a Canadian bush pilot.

Players experience the game through the eyes of William Mackenzie, a Canadian bush pilot who crashes into an isolated forest inspired by Vancouver Island. He’s left to battle the elements, fend for himself and develop relationships with other survivors. The Long Dark’s gameplay also places an emphasis on exploration and resource gathering.

Interestingly, The Long Dark will also task the player with navigating man-made hazards, all created by the new frontier world its characters now find themselves in. Mass Effect-esque moral choices will also change how The Long Dark’s gameplay and story play out.

“The Long Dark is a survival simulation at its heart. It’s really about delivering a game experience that I don’t think we’ve seen before, where we’re really focused on the nitty gritty details of wilderness survival. Having to be concerned about food and water, wildlife, time of day, weather conditions, fuel sources; all that kind of stuff in the face of a pretty major world changing event that’s kind of thrown things upside down,” said Raphael van Lierop, Hinterland’s founder and creative director.

According to van Lierop, as The Long Dark progresses, the game will start layering more story elements and expand its open world. The Long Dark is less about action and shooting and instead, is more about exploration and discovering a picturesque environment. According to van Lierop, from a broader perspective, it asks the player to figure out how they’re going to survive in this new, very different world.

“It’s really inspired by literary post apocalyptic fiction like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road for example, much more that than The Walking Dead. There’s no zombies in The Long Dark. We’re really trying to deliver (and hopefully it doesn’t sound pretentious to say it) a more mature approach to the whole post disaster scenario,” said van Lierop.

The Long Dark’s world is desolate and dark, just as its name probably indicates.

The Long Dark also takes inspiration from environmental focused exploration games like Stalker, Fallout 3, and Red Dead Redemption. van Lierop explained that at the heart of these titles, they’re really just about exploring, being immersed in interesting environments and hunting for resources. Independent games like Journey also inspired Hinterland’s first video game, especially in terms of visuals.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Hinterland Studios is the impressive team its founder and video game industry veteran, van Lierop, has pulled together.

Various game developers, all with extensive big budget studio experience, are also part of Hinterland’s development team. The creator of League of Legends and Unfinished Swan’s unique art styles, Hokyo Lim, is handling the game’s art direction. Lim was also part of Sly Cooper’s development team.

Chris Valesco and Sascha Dikiciyan, whose music has been heard in some of the world’s biggest game franchises like Mass Effect, Borderlands and Quake, are also part of Hinterland Studio.

After reading through this list of critically acclaimed developers, try to imagine the best parts of each of these titles, combined into one compelling indie video game. It’s an exciting prospect and is exactly what The Long Dark could end up becoming.

This gas station certainly seems to have seen better days. Fuel will probably be an important commodity in The Long Dark.

“It’s different for every person on the team. Mostly they were pretty easy to recruit in the sense that they were all ex AAA developers that wanted to do something different, a little more personal and reasonable in terms of a work/life balance. I’ve moved around a lot for jobs in the industry. My family moved to the island (Vancouver Island) a couple years ago after I finished my last big game at Relic. It was an inflection point where I said I need to find a different way of doing this work or I have to find a different kind of work,” said van Lierop.

Hinterland Studios logo is kind of amazing.

Hinterland Studios has plans to eventually expand The Long Dark into a transmedia entertainment property, allowing its universe to exist across multiple mediums. The studio isn’t ready to give up specific details yet, but depending on how people respond to the game’s Kickstarter, Hinterland is in talks with people involved in the television and comic industry.

Is there someone home?

“For Hinterland, our focus is to not just create a one off game, but to create an IP that has value because people want to see more of it. In today’s world, where people are consuming media everywhere, it doesn’t really matter any more where you see something, but once you’re interested in a show, book or game, you want to experience it everywhere else too. For us it’s about building that from the ground up so those expansions and that organic expansion can happen really fluidly.